Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday June 18, 2009 @04:50PM
from the dude-pirate-is-not-the-prefered-nomenclature dept.

iateyourcookies writes "As opposed to enforcement which usually makes the headlines, The BBC is running an article called Inside A Downloader's Head which looks at the film and music industries' attempts to prevent copyright infringement. It details some of the campaigns, their rationale, controversy surrounding them and notes that 'there are plenty, even among the young, who can be eloquent about why they believe illegal downloading is not wrong. These can include everything from what they see as the unacceptable "control freakery" of DRM and regional coding, to overcharging and exploitation of the very artists the music industry claims to protect.' However, PR company for the industry Blue Rubicon attests that 'campaigns can change hearts and minds... If you do them right you can make a material impact on people's behaviour.'"

Some honest two-way dialog is what's needed, not preaching the old way.

I could be wrong but I think my first impression of the summary was somewhat like yours, though expressed differently. When I saw this part:

However, PR company for the industry Blue Rubicon attests that 'campaigns can change hearts and minds... If you do them right you can make a material impact on people's behaviour.

My first thought on reading that was "because a material impact is the only type they're capable of recognizing." I also have my doubts that their campaign is going to try to "change hearts and minds" with facts and reasoning. It's sort of like a debate which has an audience: if you're good, you can "win" a debate or an argument whether or not you are actually correct, particularly if your audience is naive, unfamiliar with argumentation and critical thinking, or has no independent understanding of the subject matter. Unfortunately, I think all three of those factors are working in favor of the *AAs. The Slashdot crowd is exceptional in many ways, but I would not expect the average person to be so familiar with these issues and many unrelated things remind me of the general public's lack of familiarity with argumentation and critical thinking.

Talk-show hosts do something similar all the time. They like to use the Socratic method not as a teaching tool, but to control the conversation by forcing the caller/guest into answering a series of simple questions that don't permit appreciation of differing viewpoints. Any attempts to suggest that the subject is more nuanced than this, that the questions don't cover the full scope of the issue, or that determing your conclusion prior to taking any other steps might be intellectually dishonest are dealt with. That's why the host's voice has a higher gain/volume than the caller's, why the host has a mute (or hold) button to instantly silence the caller, and is one (of several) reasons why calls are screened before being taken. Put those same hosts in a situation where they must interact as equals who cannot force the other person to submit to their control of the conversation and suddenly they'd have much greater difficulty seeming like they are always "right."

The situation with media campaigns is likewise asymmetric. The *AAs can easily afford to run these campaigns and get their side of the story into public view. Could you or I afford to produce and air our own commercials, on a national level, that argue against them and show any flaws in their reasoning? You mention two-way dialog. Imagine what it would do to all of PR and advertising if that were the norm.

When I was in high school, I totally thrashed this guy in debate in history class. Can't for the life of me remember what it was actually about, but I do remember that at the end, everyone in the class agreed that it wasn't fair because my side was obviously right and his side was obviously wrong. So, I challenged him to do it again, only I would defend his side and he would defend mine. After he awkwardly tried to re-hash my arguments, I explained that all of the things that I had said were true, but th

If accurate, that right there tells me that you were dealing with a passive person, a pushover or a lightweight or whatever you may call it. If he lacks his own understanding and his own perspective he's going to compete poorly against someone who has those things. That's one thing I very much like about argumentation: those who are not independent thinkers (the "sheeple" if you will) have a chance to discover why this is a significant disadvantage.

No, they want control back of your wallet. So stop spending money on computer games, mobile phones, or something else, help out those poor people in the RIAA and film industry.

If they want to win the hearts of people the solution is ALL with the RIAA / Film industry.

1) Stop producing cr@p that nobody is interested in. How many remakes of classic films can you do, do you think people don't realise a rip-off? How many formulaic "artists" are in the music charts when there's other stuff out there which does not get a look in because of the rigged radio market.

2) Stop selling the DVD's and CD's at such high prices. The market has moved on and there's competition for the money, people have more things they can buy, as I mentioned already, computer games, mobile phones etc.. It's not the 1960's where for teenagers there was music, film, and that's it.

3) Stop loading DVD's with unskippable cr@p (Disney the worst offender), stop putting idiotic unskippable trailers on copyrights - we just bought your legit DVD damn it! At least with VHS you could rewind to a spot where the actual content starts!

4) Stop putting crapware on CD's, we want Red Book Standard CD's, and we also want the cases and CD's to have the logo on it to prove they are REAL audio CD's, not the fake crap put out today.

5) Stop putting DRM on legit downloads. It p1sses me off that such and such file is restricted to what file format a device will play (with DRM built in to the player). I don't want to pay extra for a MP3 player to make some DRM licensee richer.

6) Improve the audio quality of Audio CD's, and digital downloads. Audio CD's are chasing the loudness battle - I recently bought a compilation CD and had to give it away because I had ear ache after 5 minutes of this unlistenable compressed music. Digital downloads are also not much better, where are the file formats like FLAC on ALL download sites, not just highly specialised sites. Hell, you can buy a CD then rip it to make a FLAC and it will outclass and MP3.

7) Get rid of the copy restrictions on DVD's, HD discs, camcorders, and the other formats.

MAYBE after all that, downloaders MIGHT think about buying more music and films.

Do you know what? Home taping did not kill the music industry! I still remember those days, I was a kid but I saw it! : people did 'pirate', when you wanted a tune you could just copy one for yourself, liked it? Great! you might be the one buying the tape first next time before sharing it with your friends...

The new people don't have it that easy, if they just want to copy a video they have to go to some site to crack the DRM, and etc. Or maybe they can just download the cracked version from one of the piracy sites. In my country's case, there was no such thing as streets full of hundreds of pirated tape-selling b*stards . Because, people could just easily share their stuff without their aid...

So, if you want to know the truth, all DRM is doing is make things hard for consumers that want to share their tunes. Pirates have it easier now, thanks to IT. Not only that, but the international mafias behind piracy get all their web site money and CD sales, because copying is not trivial anymore. DRM is feeding these mobs, they wouldn't exist if copying was something the most layman guy could do.

Just because the protection doesn't work, to the point where you don't even notice it, doesn't mean there is none.

Could be an interesting defense in a DMCA trial. "Your honor, I didn't know it was copy protected at all, I looked really hard but couldn't find any way this was protected. Encrypted? Ummm... Every file format has a certain format, there was no way I could see that there was some sort of encryption on top of it..."

Honestly, the reason the whole "piracy is stealing" but will never sink in is because piracy isn't really stealing and people know it.

If I walk off with someone's handbag, that handbag is gone. The fact is, with a digital copy, there's no real life analogy. If I go up to someone's handbag, make an exact copy of it, and walk off with the copy, the owner of the handbag probably won't care (nor would I have done anything illegal anyway).

The only thing you're depriving the IP owner of when you copy their IP i

Honestly, the reason the whole "piracy is stealing" but will never sink in is because piracy isn't really stealing and people know it.

You're absolutely right. All the politics and euphemisms aside, the difference between physical and digital goods is fundamental - one is rival, the other is not. It's really hard to hide that fact, since so much of computers and the Internet are designed to exploit it. So these campaigns to "change hearts and minds" end up trying to convince people that the sky is green.

Now you can argue all day long about how to deal with the differences in rivalry, and underproduction of public goods, tragedy of the comm

well, about the "download a car" thing.. maybe someday, with rapid prototyping. of course, that'd just mean we get the same debate all over again.. with the odds stacked even more against us since we'd actually be saving quite a lot doing so.

exactly the same debate, even, since it'd also open up the possibility for geeks without a factory of their own to design their own car. does this remind anyone of how open source gets criticized?

It seems crazy, but what happens when something like this is powerful enough to create anything from a small piece of electronics to even a car. I'm not sure what the ratio of car cost is between manufacture/raw materials and design.

I could see the same problem occur in anything where the main (or, in the case of music, only) cost of production is in the design and marketing.

There is a real life analogy. You know when one kid repeats everything another kid is saying? The repeatee always gets upset, and y'know what? It's really freaking annoying.

I'll bet they could get people to sympathize somewhat if they just had some ad showing a kid trying to say something meaningful and then 1, 2, 10, 100, 1000000 other kids all imitating that kid. It could end with, "Now do you see why we're upset?" in print, and after it's on the screen for a second, the first of the million repeaters saying it aloud, in his most annoying, taunting voice.

If I walk off with someone's handbag, that handbag is gone. The fact is, with a digital copy, there's no real life analogy. If I go up to someone's handbag, make an exact copy of it, and walk off with the copy, the owner of the handbag probably won't care (nor would I have done anything illegal anyway).

Hehe, what a terrible example. Lemme list the crimes:

1. Counterfeiting of bank notes.2. Counterfeiting of government issued identification.3. Counterfeiting of merchandise.4. Invasion of privacy.

I get what you're trying to say but, boy, do you need to work on how you say it.

The central issue is that the guy is just flat wrong. People can insist all they want with bogus examples and shallow rehashing of macroeconomic theory. Piracy robs someone of labor. It is simple. You know it. Grow up. What if you were trying to make a living selling media on the web and everyone stole it?

Please don't trot out the old "you can make all your money from touring" crap, either.

1. Everything is "worth" what its buyer is willing to pay for it.2. You are not entitled to be paid for every little bit of "labor" you do.. first you have to find a buyer.3. The second-hand market is legitimate and yet the exact same "robs someone" argument applies.

And I'd ask you to consider *my* rights with at least equal consideration. The artist's intellectual property rights infringe on my physical property rights. Why does he win? If his r

If I walk off with someone's handbag, that handbag is gone. The fact is, with a digital copy, there's no real life analogy. If I go up to someone's handbag, make an exact copy of it, and walk off with the copy, the owner of the handbag probably won't care (nor would I have done anything illegal anyway).

If that person makes and sells handbags, they probably would care, since people could just come along, make a copy of her handbag, and get their own without buying it from her, exploiting the time it took her to create and design said handbag.

The problem is that, for many people, the bags aren't worth paying what the maker is asking for, so if they are prevented from copying them, they'll just live without the bags. Sure, it can be morally more "just", but the maker will receive the same income in either case. And copy prevention systems cost money. Maybe they should just accept that most people that copy stuff aren't their target market anyway.

The only thing you're depriving the IP owner of when you copy their IP is the chance that you'll purchase their product. Even then, if you purchase the product because you pirated it and liked it, then the IP owner actually gets additional revenue from your piracy (although it's unlikely that this quite adds up to the lost revenue).

Copyright holder. But overall your point is good.

I wanted to add that the fact "the cost of piracy" often gets factored into things like bloated DVD prices is therefore sheer stupidity: It encourages more people to rationalize piracy ("Hey, I want to buy it but I don't want to be ripped off"), and it also acts as a barrier to people who have already pirated it and liked it from purchasing a legit copy ("I'd like to buy a legit copy, but I don't want to pay that much for it").

(I'm no psychologist, but the GGP seems to be making an argument based on abstract reasoning, which is at least adolescent thinking.)

He didn't say copyright infringement was acceptable, he said it wasn't theft.

This requires explanation. If it isn't theft, why isn't it acceptable?

Lots of things that aren't theft aren't acceptable -- murder, polluting rivers, stealing handbags, flirting with my best friend's girlfriend and talking in class being examples.(And incidentally, thinking only in black-or-white allowed/denied terms could be considered immature.)

Copyright law exists to encourage artists to create works by enabling them to profit from sales of c

Interesting analysis. One problem with it is that much of the "payment" demanded for digital goods is not actually directly linked to the labor used to produce it. A lot of the resistance to paying for music would go away, if the people paying were confident that a) the money was going to the people who created the music, and b) it was a "fair" payment for that music. Most people don't mind if Paul McCartney makes a billion dollars, but much of the music industry is designed to siphon money away from the

A lot of the resistance to paying for music would go away, if the people paying were confident that a) the money was going to the people who created the music, and b) it was a "fair" payment for that music.

Are you proposing that in general commerce people should not be required to pay if these touchy-feely criteria are not met? Can your employer also invoke them and decide not to pay you for your labor? After all, while you worked at your job, no physical good was exchanged, so you didn't lose anything,

Your example is childish and disingenuous because you are ignoring the labor that went into a product.

Incorrect. Illegal copying doesn't deprive anyone of their labor (or cause them to labor against their will) any more than it deprives them of the work being copied.

Only a finite amount of labor went into that product, and the labor has already been performed by the time anyone has a chance to make a copy. Whether you buy a copy legally, download a copy illegally, or don't obtain a copy at all, the amount of labor doesn't change -- the artist does exactly the same amount of work, no matter how many copies are eventually made or how many of those copies are legal.

Another way to look at it is that the artist gains no benefit when people choose not to download his works. His life isn't any richer or easier when his work is seen by 10 paying customers than when it's seen by 10 paying customers and 500 pirates. The pirates cause him no extra effort and take nothing away from him.

This, by the way, firmly places you in a clinically pre-adolescent stage of cognitive development.

When you've posted a completely boneheaded argument, pretending to be a psychologist only makes you look worse. Please, keep it up!

Keep trying. Your flaw is that if taken to the extreme of all digital media being pirated, the creators would indeed be deprived of the fruits of their labor. Even if only a fraction of the output is pirated, the business model of selling digital goods is subverted. It is specious to insist that nothing is lost simply because a material item did not change hands.

Another way to look at it is that the artist gains no benefit when people choose not to download his works. His life isn't any richer or easier

Keep trying. Your flaw is that if taken to the extreme of all digital media being pirated, the creators would indeed be deprived of the fruits of their labor.

How silly. You might as well claim you're being deprived of the fruits of your labor when you mow your neighbor's lawn (without asking him first) and then he refuses to pay you.

They're only entitled to "fruits of their labor" when someone has agreed to pay for that labor beforehand. If I decide to spend my time making a movie, the only thing I'm entitled to afterward is a copy of that movie. My choice to perform labor doesn't obligate anyone else to pay me for it. Such an obligation can only come from a mutual agreement between me and the person who's paying.

Even if only a fraction of the output is pirated, the business model of selling digital goods is subverted.

So what? No one is required to make another person's business model work, especially such a foolish model as "work for free now, sell copies later", and especially when propping up that model requires ceding one's own right to communicate.

It is specious to insist that nothing is lost simply because a material item did not change hands.

No, it's just a straightforward application of the meaning of "lost". You can't lose something you never had. You can't lose money that belongs to someone else. You can, however, fail to convince someone to give you their money.

Music, video, games, etc. are digital information that required a great deal of labor to create.

Indeed they are. That's why it's so foolish to do all that labor for free and then pray that you can recoup your production costs by selling copies, especially when you know anyone can cut you out of the loop by making their own copies at home. The creation is the valuable part, not the copying.

Copying it without compensation or in violation of the artist's chosen license does indeed transfer a good from the artist to the thief.

More directly, it transfers a good from the uploader (who is almost certainly not the artist) to the downloader.

But "transfer" is not theft. When I tell you that the acceleration due to gravity on Earth is 9.8 m/s/s, I've transferred information to you, but I haven't lost anything. If you pass that information on to someone else without my permission, I still haven't lost anything.

Theft absolutely requires a loss. That's what makes theft a bad thing in the first place: not the fact that the thief gets something for free, but the fact that the rightful owner no longer has it. If you could wave a magic wand and make a copy of someone's car, few people would object to that (since it doesn't make them any poorer), and you'd have a hard time convincing anyone to call it an act of theft.

Most people have a better understanding of what theft is, and why theft is wrong, than you seem to. The best possible outcome of your line of argument is that you convince a few people that there are two kinds of "theft": the kind that's bad and the kind that isn't. Is that really what you want?

Keep denying it. You are stuck in the past. In this century, digital goods are a valid commercial entity.

I'm not the one who's stuck in the past. Copyright is an artifact of a relatively brief era when copying on a massive scale was practical for a few wealthy entities (who could afford printing presses, CD manufacturing plants, etc.) but not for the masses. Copyright is enforceable when you only need to keep an eye on factory owners who see copying as a business venture. But that era is gone: copying is now practical on a massive scale for anyone, the most dangerous copying (to the antiquated business model) is casual and noncommercial, and copyright is no longer enforceable without utterly decimating free speech and technical innovation.

You are mistaken, of course. You are merely trying to pretend that your misrepresentation of the situation is somehow more enlightened. You know this. Your rebuttal is childish and disingenuous because you are calling names and deliberately misrepresenting the key elements of the situation.

The poster is quite capable of understanding events in a purely abstract form. Better than you (if we are to take your comments at face-value...though in giving you the benefit of the doubt we shall not do so).

I must admit this is one of the more cool headed yet vigorous defenses of piracy I have yet seen. Excellent try. You are however, mistaken. Also, there was no name calling.

The poster is not ignoring the labor that went into producing digital content. But what you are ignoring, and what the poster is not ignoring, is that once the good exists it is abundant (can be reproduced infinitely at zero cost to both the producer and the recipient). While it is still true that labor was involved, this abundance cha

And you're ignoring that nearly all labor was already paid for and thus the laborers are deprived of nothing. The only exception are some recording artists who everyone knows are being screwed not by pirates but by the record companies. Also, your comprehension of the abstract concepts of labor, money, and markets are lacking, so you might want to be careful before acting like you go much beyond the pre-adolescent stage yourself. You are assuming a strict relationship between labor, payment for that labo

The article seems filled with examples of fuzzy logic. For example, it discusses how many "bad guys" force illegal immigrants/migrants to sell pirated DVDs on the street, thus showing an example of how innocent foreigners are harmed by the trade in illegal software/media. However... isn't this better than them being forced into being drug mules or prostitutes? Shouldn't they be trying to clarify that morality != legality rather than muddling the issue?

I suppose it's better than RIAA's tactics, but the claims of reducing piracy by 5% seem tenuous at best.

It's also a deliberate conflation of two very different issues. The trade in pirated CDs and DVDs -- fly-by-night publishers making physical copies of the discs, packaging them to look like the real thing, and selling them on the street -- has very little in common with people downloading copies onto their personal machines, except that they both involve copyright infringement. The first is clearly a type of organized street crime, with all the dangers that implies; the second involves no physical danger

Please, for the love of god, stop assuming that it's the same people saying both things. Slashdot is an online forum which means that it has multiple people on it with differing opinions (see: any discussion where it's not just people agreeing with each other)

The problem is they are hyping up their propaganda campaign, so when progressing technology inevitably wins the battle, they claim a "victory."

The fact that home taping didn't kill the music industry is just the tip of the iceberg. The quality of recording music off the airwaves meant that it was never a threat to begin with. There are a lot of downloaders who are basically digital packrats, but a lot of people download TV as a cheap alternative to TiVo. Is it their fault the video industry took years

I can't justify everything I've downloaded from the pirate bay, however, there are certain instances where I don't feel the least bit sorry:

* I purchased Spore and then downloaded the cracked version, which I installed on my computer, and then edited the system registry to give myself a the key. Sorry, if I purchased a piece of software, I deserve to get at least as good an experience as the pirates do, which means no rootkits.* Several years ago, I purchased RPG Maker XP. I've gone through several computers since the purchase, and it no longer allows me to activate the software. I'd like to continue using the software that I legitimately paid for, and my only option is to download a cracked, pirated version.* On many occasions, I've downloaded no-CD cracks for games I've purchased legitimately.

Did I violate the DMCA in these cases? Probably. Do I feel justified in doing so? Absolutely. I shouldn't be locked out of software that I purchase, and when I buy software legitimately, I shouldn't be punished for it with shitty DRM.

Would record labels (and this unfortunately includes lots of independent ones) please stop making several versions of the same CD. If I hear a song at a gig (or especially in a nightclub) I might buy the album on impulse. It really annoys me when I find out that I was meant to buy the Super Luxury Limited Edition CD for another £4 to get the "bonus track/remix" which I heard. Or that I've bought the US version but the European version has more tracks.

Activation sucks, ran into the same issue with a game I purchased (online delivery) that I tried to track down a regression in WINE with. It had quite a few activations (never checked how many, probably in the forever long EULA). Reactivation after that was an email form that took two days to get a response. And if I ever needed to reinstall, I'd have to do that again. My response to that email "Thanks, but I already found a quicker, easier, permanent and probably illegal solution, but I don't care. Have a

How are you violating the DMCA? Does it have something to do with decoder library licenses or something?

Commercial DVDs are encrypted with a protocol/algorithm called CSS [wikipedia.org]. It is an 'access control mechanism' in the language of the DMCA. DeCSS [wikipedia.org] is software that breaks this encryption and is thus illegal to use, own, distribute (including hyperlinking, see MPAA v 2600), or even discuss the details of under the DMCA. Since there are no licensed Linux DVD players, this is the only way to view DVDs on Linux.

It was all over slashdot and thus unavoidable when it happened... which was over 10 years ago. So if you a younger geek or just a newer one to the site you might not have heard about it other than obliquely in comments.

You put the finger in a very sore wound here: Someone who does not buy the content but rather reproduces it illegaly often gets a better experience than someone who was honest enough to buy it.

The worst offender in this game that I encountered so far was a certain, well known music editing program. Said program's copy protection consisted of a sizable portion of their code running on a virtual machine that used an "encrypted" executable (i.e. assembler instructions used different codes. inc eax was iirc 0x7

I completely agree that 99% of DRM breaks products and harms consumer experience (yes I like how Steam works, no I don't want to get into that debate right now). I am curious though: would you be so opposed to it if copyright was reasonable and lasted 7 years? You would then have the option of buying the flawed product to start using it now, or waiting for copyright to expire and get it for cheap/free then. Of course, if consumers are given that choice, DRM would have to be much more palatable since it has

unacceptable "control freakery" of DRM and regional coding, to overcharging and exploitation of the very artists the music industry claims to protect

As a first step I suggest they finish up with DRM, regional coding, overcharging and exploitation of artists. That will certainly leave the downloaders without arguments, and much enhance the effect of any campaign they are planning. I for one would pay more attention to any message if there was cheap, non-DRM'd, varied and easily available music and videos, an

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause [wikipedia.org]To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_(Thoreau) [wikipedia.org]"Resistance" also served as part of Thoreau's metaphor which compared the government to a machine, and said that when the machine was working injustice it was the duty of conscientious citizens to be "a counter friction" - that is, a resistance - "to stop the machine."

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Now, the current length for copyright seems to be 50 years or more after the death of an author. Are you fucking kidding me? How the hell is that limited in any way? The person has been dead for 49 years and his/her work still isn't public domain? What is that crap?

The copyright should be date of publication + 20 years and I don't care if the author is a person or a corporation, nor do I care if the art in question is a song, a tune, a movie, a videogame, a tv show, a book, whatever.

If it was published or released before 1989 then it should be public domain, no exceptions.

In fact, the governments should have web servers so that its citizens can go download the now-public-domain things for free, in open or non-proprietary formats.

Copyright is an incentive to create work, providing a period of exclusivity (for want of a better word) in which the author/creator/artist is able to monopolize on their created work. Copyright was not intended as, nor should it be allowed to become, a welfare system for artists. Surely the return on investment made in the creation of the work can be made, if it's going to be made, within a reasonable time span such as, for example, twenty years?

there are plenty, even among the young, who can be eloquent about why they believe illegal downloading is not wrong. These can include everything from what they see as the unacceptable "control freakery" of DRM and regional coding, to overcharging and exploitation of the very artists the music industry claims to protect.

"Principled opposition to copyright itself" is, of course, left out of their range of acceptable dissent.

The core of what is wrong is the abuse, exploitation and extension of copyright law. Region coding is not justifiable as a means to do anything but control multiple prices in multiple markets. Content protection systems (aka DVD-CSS) are not justifiable as it does not prevent copying and only serves to control how and what players are used to access the media that, once purchased, the media companies no longer have any right or entitlement to. And the very idea of DRM is not only a problem in the sense that it grants no rights to the user and that they literally have to "ask permission to access" each and every time the user wants to access it, but it also runs the risk of becoming theft on the part of the DRM controller as when they shut down, they deny all access to the content that was legally paid for by the consumer. (They selleth, and then they taketh away!) And the extension of copyright terms to durations that can only be useful to immortal corporate "persons"? That is more unreasonable than words can express.

And before anyone can say "but that does not give you the right to steal" I have to say "so fucking what?!" Look. Fighting against "wrongness" in any way available is how the USA gained its independence. Some colonials wanted to stay connected to the crown of England and didn't want any part of it. Sounds like the "no right to steal" crowd.

And forgetting all this morality stuff, let's be plain about it. The amount of copyright infringement is negligible and most infringers are also people who buy things when they can and when it is good enough. These media jerks should let it quietly go on because they are still raking in tons of money and are still getting their laws passed. They don't need the enemies they are breeding and they don't need the growing fight they are getting. The more fight they give, the more doom they bring upon themselves. Wait and see... they will be wishing for "the good ole days" when they have everything nearly the way they wanted.

Region coding is a technique that allows different countries to have different censorship (aka Movie Ratings). WIthout this or something like it a DVD must satisfy UK, Japan and USA requirements. This isn't going to happen very easily except for My Little Pony animated cartoons. Take a look sometime what they are forced to cut out to be able to sell a movie in Japan that was already edited for UK.

There basically is no such thing as child porn in Japan. So showing nearly naked 12-year-olds having sex is f

Region coding MIGHT serve that purpose were it not for the very few and wide ranging regions that are designated. "Censorship" as an argument doesn't fly. A DVD sold in Japan is no different from a VHS tape sold in Japan or a book sold in Japan. It's media. There is no need for regions based on this and was NEVER a requirement by any national government. Not ever. And the argument that without it, a DVD couldn't meet whose requirements? What requirements might

'First though, an apology. File sharing is not theft. It has never been theft. Anyone who says it is theft is wrong and has unthinkingly absorbed too many Recording Industry Association of America press releases. We know that script line was wrong. It was a mistake. We're very, very sorry.'

Until they start living up to their end of the copyright agreement, I don't give a fucking rat's ass what they have to say. That means putting copyrighted works into the public domain while they're still relevant, valuable, AND profitable. For most entertainment items, that would mean about 5 years or less.

They're also not helping themselves with the bullshit clips on DVDs claiming that downloading is stealing.

Word to the media distributors: when you play fair, I'll play fair. Until then, go sodomize yourse

You know what burns me most about the DRM stuff? That it gives the **AA the right to wast millions of person hours every day. I'm not going to steal their film; why should I be forced to sit through the legal warnings? The people who are going to steal it won't pay attention when they're ripping it.

The way I see it, if an average lifetime is 75 years, then that's 39.4 million minutes. Assuming that any DVDs that are sold are watched at least twice, then any movie that sells 20 million copies has wast

My personal thoughts are the best way to counter piracy is to make people like you. I can only really give examples from my experience, as I don't really know other people's piracy habits.

I am an avid gamer of all systems, although I rarely game on my PC anymore, as it's typically too much of a hassle with configurations and DRM. The DRM decreases my chance of buying a PC game, (especially if there's a good console version) and makes me more likely to pirate. As an example, I bought a copy of Spore. My bought copy of Spore thought I was pirating it. After screwing around for a bit, I decided to say screw it, and downloaded a pirated copy from the Pirate Bay. As a result, were I actually interested in the Sims 3, I feel I'd be much more likely to pirate it, now that EA's ticked me off.

I have around 200+ console + handheld games, none of them pirated. Several of my systems (DS + PSP in particular) have very active "homebrew" communities, that make it very easy to acquire "backups". Despite the ease of which I know I could get handheld games for free, I choose to buy them, because I derive a great deal of value in having the original box + manual + disc/card to display, and because I actually like the companies.

Pirating a game from, say, Nintendo to me would feel like kicking Mario in the groin. Nintendo (and others) have brought me such good times, that they seem almost like a friend. The few times I've even considered pirating DS games, I've felt very uneasy, the thought of it feels just wrong, to me. The RIAA, on the other hand, does not invoke such warm, fuzzy feelings to just about anyone. Perhaps if they stopped suing so many people, and installing rootkits on people's computers, they might have some more goodwill left.

Those are just my thoughts. I know plenty of people don't derive the same satisfaction from having a big collection of legit games/music/whatever, but I really think that if the RIAA stopped suing people and instead built up a strong relationship with its customers like many gaming companies, and Apple, they might see similar loyalty and less piracy.

Also, suing little kids is stupid on a logical level. I pirated plenty of software when I was around 12 or so because I had no money. Ten years later, I have plenty of disposable income, and provide the entertainment industries with many thousands of dollars in revenue a year.

1) Stop forcing people to watch through "piracy is a crime and teh FBI will jail you for 10 years if you bring your camera phone into a movie theater" for 5 minutes before every movie. Doing that just makes the TPB version a superior product to your version. It's basic capitalism - don't cripple your own product. It's that simple.

... uses the word 'pirate' in a sentence, replace it with 'amateur librarian'. You now know how pirates think, if only subconsciously.

We can spend the next few decades trying to recreate the scarcity of information. Seriously, we can. There is no magical reason why copyright laws have to get more liberal, or that the rent seeking industries of the world will start producing things that people are willing to pay for, or that the government will 'get' file sharing as the baby boomers are replaced by people that have been trading information since the mid 90's.

This won't put humpty dumpty back together. Everyone has their own printing press/itunes store/app store, and has had one since end of the last century. The incredible utility of having computers that can run whatever software a user wants will not be dulled. A business model based on scarcity that used to exist *will* fail. As in the flunky working for $big_media_conglomerate that says 'hai guise wii can prevent people from steeling are stuff bi suing people and passing laws to make p2p moar eleegal' is wasting everyone's time and money.

There is no scarcity of information. This is the point of the Internet. Build a business around the artificial creation of scarcity at your job's peril.

People do all sorts of things in the expectation of making money. Sometimes this expectation is fulfilled; sometimes it isn't. It's not really a matter of morality in most cases.

No matter how you water it down, you took something that you didn't pay for.

If I "take" something from you, then you no longer have it. That is clearly not what's going on here.

You're only lying to yourself.

The liars are the ones who pretend that intellectual property and real property are the same thing, when any rational person can see that they aren't.

You claim to believe that illegally downloading movies is theft, but that you do it anyway. I have to question the sincerity of your belief. Do you regularly steal other things as well? Probably not, and if not, then it's a pretty good bet that the reason you're willing to "steal" movies but not steal money or cars is because you recognize that there is a fundamental difference between these actions.

That's certainly true. In order for me to be a really good diamond thief I'd have to weigh the threat my freedom if I was caught. If the likelihood of being caught was incredibly low or the penalties were lower, it'd be a heck of a lot of fun.

What it is not, however, is any form of lost revenue. You would never have purchased that movie in the first place. It was not physically produced, shipped or shelved. No material loss was suffered, nor any sale eliminated. The cost of piracy to the copyright industries cannot be measured by multiplying downloads times retail prices; not even close. Yet this is how they attempt to portray it. This is what "theft" means.

It *is* theft. The movie was produced to make money.. and it is quite fair for them to expect that people won't just take it and not pay.

If I stand on the street corner playing the guitar and tambourine, hoping to make money, is it "theft" when people listen to the music without dropping a dollar in my hat?

Of course not. Just because you hope to make money doing something doesn't mean anyone is obligated to pay you for it.

If you want to get paid for making movies, there's a simple solution: don't make movies unless someone is paying you. As a professional programmer, I don't write code for free if I'm expecting to get paid for it. For every

Not really. Information only wants to be cheap enough, and that includes transaction costs.

I don't watch that many films, but when I do, my requirements are as follows: I don't want to decide early on what I want to watch (ideally, I want to make up my mind at dinner, and watch it after the coffee), I don't want to spend more time on getting what I want then the time spent deciding what to see (i.e. buh-bye shop), and I want to be able to have at least two alternatives for the evening, in case I get bored with my first choice.

So, in my heart and mind the situation looks like this:

(a) I can download legally: There is little choice in services, they have various requirements for software (meaning it is limited to OS and browser I don't use), they have ridiculously little choice, half of that without language support I require and the price for what is available is also kind of high (a movie download cost about $20-ish last I bothered to check).

(b) I can downloading illegally: I can choose OS and player as I see fit, the availability of content is unsurpassed, even rare films, which will never make it legally here, or have been out of commercial circulation for decades are available; and there is usually someone helpful who has provided subtitles in my language, and in the language of the significant other, for even the weirdest movie and language. besides, it is really fast.

So, again, why should I bother with the "legal" downloads? Why should I put up with crappy customer service? Just because someone bribed some politico types and bought themselves a monopoly? It isn't like the "legal" provider cannot do for me for the same $20 what any private tracker does for free. If they would, I'd be happy to subscribe. I'd be even happier to watch for $5, or (less happy probably) for a fixed monthly subscription of sorts.

It is so simple to win my heart and mind, that I am at a huge loss as to why it is still unwon. The problem isn't it is hard. The problem is no one wants to win me. Well, if you suck, I'll damn right go where they treat me better.